I'm a multiplayer/mmo proponent for the most part, but in this case when multicrew was announced I was really hoping for NPC multicrew first. I just thought it would have made more sense, it can be used across all modes, and would be a good way to expand usage of the Crew that we hire for the fighters.

That was best third party mod created for ED in my opinion, pretty sure it did not ruin anything for those who choose not to use it.

That whole "choose not to use it" argument never really holds water though. I can choose to have green or purple lasers, that impacts nothing in-game. If I choose not to fully automate everything, which is pretty much what the OP is asking for, I'm choosing to make less money and less progress by what ever metric you use. That becomes less of a choice and more of a requirement; e.g. who in their right mind would purposely choose to use an underrated FSD if they can afford the A-rated one? If you have a co-pilot do just about everything you might as well be able to run ED while you sleep, if you do then is it really a game any more or is is a game simulation that you occasionally check on when you have time?

Edit: wanted to add that I'm not against the idea of a co-pilot, in fact I'd like parity with players that open their ships to other players. That NPC co-pilot should be limited to doing what a human co-pilot can do now.

Just being able to make a few "automated" jumps will do nothing but remove one of the most dull and repetitive tasks of Elite. I don't ask for scooping.
And if you are going AFK, you still risk an interdiction. Same goes for a station approach... staring at a number for minutes, hitting the 6 could be totally annoying for some of us after you did it 1000 times. But you will also have the risk of an interdiction if you go AFK. Ok, hitting the right approach vector to land on the entrance side is a small additional task, but while Frontier never delivered the micro jumps, why not having a partial automated station approach flown by the copilot.
This would have less impact on the game than the heat sink or chaff task which could result in a direct advantage over another player.

We have a docking computer, which automates a much more complicated task than a jump or station approach.
And I use it in some ships, in others not, sometimes for the last few meters and sometimes for the full maneuver while checking other stuff.
I know many players which refuse to use it all the time. And I couldn't care less about them using it or not... It's totally not affecting me at all.

Wouldn't it be cool if our high payed copilots could work for their money?
The rank could result in the kind and number of tasks they are able to manage.
And they should be visible... I am bored flying alone. :-/

Jobs could be managed by rules (orders) where the player could define special behaviour for the tasks
Some Ideas: (I know, many of the stuff is already managed by external tools like voice attack)

- manage landing gear after take off
- fire heat sink at a defined amount of heat
- fire a chaff when shields are down and under fire
- scan system after jump
- target enemy if you are being interdicted
- maybe some power management tasks
- 360° scans for pirates while bounty hunting
- some protocols (kind of macros) Escape protocol for example: fire chaff/heat sink, power to engines(4)/shields(2), boost, start low wake or select nearest star for emergency high wake, ...
- target specific subsystems
- simple autopilot tasks like jump until reaching the next fuel star or supercruise station approaches

Edit:
- request docking after approaching a station

These are only a few ideas to discuss. Many of you may not like some of the task to be automated, but you don't have to use it.
I would love to see useful copilots. It would add so much life to our ships and could remove some annoying tasks without breaking immersion.

I would be happy if that damn vampiress was just sitting in her damn chair. (Oh yeah - a toggle for her dialogue would be nice too, unless they could get her to say about 100 different things instead of 8).

I personally would hate seeing crewman on my ship. I prefer to like the idea of me being alone in my ship, automated systems maintaining other useless systems while solely flying my way through the galaxy. I prefer the idea of solitude. Seeing npc's in my ship that I didn't ask for, even a co-pilot, would me off. I'm already frustrated that a lot of ships have off-center cockpits and a co-pilot seat when I am the Commander and as such should be center of the ship for the sake of accurate piloting. Honestly that's one thing that bothers me irl about driving cars. I wish there was a no-passenger seat version of cars with the driver in the center. Makes more sense that way.

I personally would hate seeing crewman on my ship. I prefer to like the idea of me being alone in my ship, automated systems maintaining other useless systems while solely flying my way through the galaxy. I prefer the idea of solitude. Seeing npc's in my ship that I didn't ask for, even a co-pilot, would me off. I'm already frustrated that a lot of ships have off-center cockpits and a co-pilot seat when I am the Commander and as such should be center of the ship for the sake of accurate piloting. Honestly that's one thing that bothers me irl about driving cars. I wish there was a no-passenger seat version of cars with the driver in the center. Makes more sense that way.

The thing is, the big ships in Elite Dangerous's predecessors required crew before you could even take off, for example the Anaconda required a crew of 8 (IIRC) so making the decision to buy one also meant you had to factor in wages. If they had followed that through with ED, you may not have got the mad rush for everyone to go for the Anaconda because it was the best multi-role ship, and would have to balance your choices if you knew you had 8 mouths to feed.

The Panther Clipper was an embuggerance with it's crew of 15 requirement